Dirt and Diamonds
by ImpalaLove
Summary: Written for Otorisosa-kan's April Prompt Challenge. Challenge word: diamond. Set in season 4 sometime after Dean finds out about Ruby (so mild spoilers, I suppose). "The car was dirty. That's when he should've known something was really wrong."


**Written for Otorisosa-kan's April Writing Challenge. For me, this month's prompt was simply to incorporate the word 'diamond.' This story is set in season 4 sometime after Dean finds out about Ruby and Sam's continued 'relationship' with her (vague spoilers).**

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Dirt and Diamonds

The car was dirty.

That's when he should've known something was really wrong. Because if there was even one blemish on that beloved Impala, the thing Dean cared about more than most things (would've liked you to believe it was all things, but Sam knew better) then that meant something was really not right. And there was more than one blemish. There were scuff marks along the sides of her sleek frame and there was a layer of mud splattering the tires, and one of the headlights looked half-busted, sunlight glinting off of the cracked glass as it rose up against the backdrop of Sam's latest unnamed motel. If the Impala was as dirty as it was now, it could only mean the end of the world. So that should've been Sam's first clue.

But Sam didn't notice the car. Because to him, the world had just started up again. And he only saw Dean.

Dean, who he hadn't laid eyes on in over a month, hadn't heard from him since that last drunk dial less than a week after he left. Left Sam alone in a shoddy motel room with nothing but a bag of guns and some holy water for comfort.

Needless to say, those first few days after Sam had awoken to an empty room were filled with crippling worry and endless searching and absolutely no sleep. Sam had known right away that Dean left of his own accord. There was the note, for one thing. Five words scrawled quickly across motel stationary.

_Please don't look for me. _

The Impala was gone and the room had been tidy and undisturbed, save for the absence of Dean's duffle and the clothes he usually left strewn about the room. In his haste, he'd forgotten a few things; half a bottle of toothpaste and a plain black undershirt now rolled up into a tight ball and stuffed into the bottom of Sam's bag. But besides that, the disappearing act had been a thorough and successful one.

And then he'd called. Dean had called four days later, slurring his apology into the phone, and Sam had been so relieved, he'd forgotten to be angry at first. That was probably a good thing, because the moment he'd _started_ to get angry had been the moment Dean had hung up on him, the call cutting off midway through Sam's unfiltered demands about where the hell his brother had run off to. It had been the last Sam had heard from Dean for the next thirty-two days. Because as good as Sam was at tracking, he'd learned it all from Dean. And Dean knew exactly how to disappear from his brother, though he'd never taken advantage of that particular skill before.

And yet here he was now, leaning against his filthy car in front of Sam's motel room with his hands in his pockets and a sad, uneasy smile tugging at his lips, and all Sam could do was stare.

"Heya Sammy," Dean said, his tongue rolling and breaking over the words like he was afraid to say them out loud, afraid of how they would taste in his mouth. His face was smattered with half-healed bruises, and he wouldn't meet Sam's eyes, his gaze flickering down to his muddy feet and then over Sam's shoulder, fidgeting like a child caught in some terrible act. And still, Sam just stared.

"You gonna...say something?" Dean asked after a long, tense silence. He pushed himself off from the car and took a few timid steps in Sam's direction, and Sam could see something slightly off in the way he walked, advancing slowly until he was just a few feet away. Sam was standing frozen in the doorway of his motel room, one hand still latched to the handle, the other grasped tightly around the frame, fingernails digging into the wood.

"Stop," Sam said, unleashing his hold on the doorframe and instead thrusting his hand outward, halting Dean's advance.

"Sam..."

"Dean. Stop," Sam said again. He closed his eyes for a second, leaning forward so that his hair fell to cover most of his face. He took one deep breath, and then opened his eyes again and lifted his head to stare at his big brother. He took in the hunched, stiff set of Dean's shoulders; the mud and faint signs of blood that covered the majority of his clothing. It had dried out and collected into the folds of Dean's jacket, splattered his tall brown boots, and almost disguised the fact that his last pair of good jeans now sported several holes. Sam saw the way Dean's eyes shifted from his, the way he couldn't quite lift his head enough to look Sam in the eye. Sam watched how Dean's fingers kept twitching, how he kept his hands moving so that maybe Sam wouldn't notice how much he was trembling.

"What did you do, Dean?" Sam asked after a while, because he knew this was the single most important question. It wasn't about where Dean had been or why he had left without telling Sam or why the car (which Sam had finally taken notice of) was in such bad shape. Yes, Sam desperately wanted the answers to those questions, but right now, the only thing that truly mattered was what Dean had done. It was all there in the way Dean stood, in the shaking of his hands and the bending curve of his usually straight-edged military posture and in his attempt to hide the blood that Sam could still see trickling out from his hairline. Guilt radiated off of Dean like a poison filtering out into the air, leveling everything in its path.

"Dean. What did you do?" Sam asked again. Because Dean was still just standing there with his head bent low, trying so hard to plaster that stupid fake smile onto his face that instead made him look like he was trying not to cry.

Dean sighed and shook his head and lifted his face by a millimeter.

"I...look I know you're mad and...and you have every right to be, okay?" he said. "And I know I left without saying anything and that probably freaked you out..."

Sam scoffed, loud and indignant, folding his arms in front of his chest as he finally emerged the rest of the way from his motel room. Dean flinched and took a step back, but kept talking, his usually precise words coming out stilted and uncertain.

"I can't change any of it now," he muttered. "I _wouldn't_ change it. It was the only way I could see. It was the only option I could...I..." Dean stopped, running a hand over his eyes and keeping it there so that Sam couldn't see his expression.

"Tell me what you did, Dean." Sam tried to say it a little softer this time, but he was struggling to maintain control, trying not to scream or start wailing on his brother, who was standing just within arms length.

A few seconds later and Sam was about to start screaming anyway, was about to let go of his initial intentions of remaining calm. But then he heard Dean's stuttered inhale, watched the first tear fall clumsily from Dean's eyelashes, one shimmering diamond of moisture that slipped clumsily down his cheek and onto the ground below. Dean held himself impossibly still for a moment, feet planted firmly, as if he were drawing energy directly from the earth. And then he lifted his gaze to meet Sam's, that one tear the only one he had let fall. The rest were hovering just behind his eyes, staying just out of reach. And he was still smiling that stupid, horrible, heart-wrenching smile.

"I'm not sorry. I'm not," Dean said, his eyes boring into Sam's.

"Dean...what?" Sam asked, scared now. "Tell me what's wrong. Tell me what happened."

Dean sniffed and shook his head. "It's okay Sammy. You don't have to worry about it. We don't have to talk about it and we don't have to think about it now. We can just get back to doing what we do best, okay? We can just go back to hunting. You and me."

Dean reached out a hand and patted Sam on the arm, his words coming out as more of a plea than a statement. He tried to push past Sam into the motel room, but Sam stopped him, grabbing both of his shoulders and not letting him go. Dean struggled for a second, but then seemed to give up completely. He sagged into his little brother with a heavy sigh, forcing Sam to take most of his weight. Sam grunted in surprise, finally giving in and pulling Dean with him into the room, kicking the door closed behind them. He guided Dean towards the closest bed, watching worriedly as his big brother sank willingly into the mattress, sitting down and folding his body almost completely in half, head dropping heavily into his hands.

"Dean," Sam tried again. "Dean please tell me what's going on. Please can you just...just start from the beginning, okay?"

Dean took a few more halting breaths before he finally lifted his head enough to nod. His words came slow at first, picking up speed as he spoke.

"I was...you were already asleep when I got the call. It was the same night...the same night I left," Dean huffed. He was sitting up a little straighter now, and Sam took this as a sign that he could now migrate over to the other bed. He sat down on the edge so that he could see Dean's profile, his brother's face illuminated harshly by the small lamp sitting on the nightstand.

"So I got the call and I wasn't sure what to do because, you know, we'd been on the road so long and I didn't want to wake you up," Dean continued. "And I didn't want to scare you, you know? Because who knows who else...I mean if these guys were...I just couldn't risk it, you know? I didn't know how long...or if there would be others."

"Dean, what are you talking about? Who was on the phone?" Sam asked, trying to keep up with Dean's disjointed words. Dean rubbed his hands together and stared up at the ceiling.

"Ellen," he said. "Ellen called because she overheard people talking. Hunters. And she said...I mean she told me she doesn't normally eavesdrop, but that these guys were loud, you know? And they seemed serious, had a real game-plan worked out or whatever...so she called."

"What did they say?" Sam pressed, the first signs of real fear tickling at the back of his neck. "What were the hunters talking about?"

Dean smiled again, that same bitter grin that marred his features, almost to the point of grief.

"You."

It was all he needed to say.

Sam inhaled sharply, the color draining from his face. He thought back to Dean's appearance: the dirty car, signs of blood, the bruises covering the side of his face.

"You didn't..." Sam stopped, couldn't continue. Tried again. "I mean you...you wouldn't, right?"

Dean stared at the ceiling again.

"They're not dead, Sammy," he said finally, and Sam was about to sigh in relief when Dean cut him off again.

"I mean I'm not...I'm not sure. I called the police when it was over, told them where to go. Wasn't just gonna leave 'em like that. I mean they were pretty...they were pretty messed up. I'm not sure if..." Dean paused for a second, a long breath whistling past his pursed lips. "I'm not sure."

Both brothers were silent for a long moment, Dean's words ricocheting off the thin walls of the motel and pushing against their skulls, demanding to be heard; accepted.

"How many...?" Sam asked after a while.

"Five," Dean replied matter-of-factly, picking at the skin around his fingernails. "They uh...I tried to explain, tried to tell them..."

Sam nodded, not wanting his brother to continue talking. But Dean did anyway, seemed to gather himself after a moment.

"I found 'em set up in an empty barn just outside Lawrence- tracking us from the place they think it all started. So I uh, I told them they shouldn't believe everything they heard. Told them it wasn't true and that if they tried coming after us, I'd put 'em in the ground. But they were all...they were already convinced, you know? They'd heard about the stuff you could do, said it was unnatural. Had to be stopped. And it was raining and everything so the ground...I mean the car's a mess and I gotta get the headlight fixed and uh..."

Dean was still staring at the ceiling, his hands now laced together tightly in front of him, as if each trying to squeeze the life out of the other. Sam stood up and began pacing, trying to stop the trembling of his own hands.

"Why would you...God Dean, why would you do that?" he said finally, his voice rising.

Dean jerked his head up to stare at his little brother, his voice thick, as if he'd been swallowing too much air.

"What the hell do you mean Sam? What do you mean 'why would I do this'? They were gonna come after us. They were gonna kill us if I didn't do something!"

"Me," Sam muttered, shaking his head.

"What?"

"_Me_, Dean. They only would've been coming for _me_. You didn't have to...I mean you never should've..._why_?" Sam asked, his tone dripping with remorse that shouldn't belong to him.

"Come on Sam, you shouldn't have to even ask that," Dean growled, straightening up a little more on the mattress. "It's…look, I'm sorry I left, I really am. But this needed doing, and now it's done."

"Dean..."

"Can we not talk about this anymore?" Dean cut in, his forehead wrinkling in distaste. "Can I just...take a shower and get some sleep, and we'll talk about it tomorrow?"

Without waiting for an answer, Dean rocked back onto his feet and made his way to the bathroom, shutting the door decisively behind him. Sam stared at the closed door, somewhat dumbfounded, listening to the sound of the shower turning on. Sam couldn't seem to process what his brother had done. Done for _him_.

In light of all the crap Sam had pulled, all the things he'd done behind Dean's back and all the ways he'd let his brother down, Dean was still willing to take down anyone who even thought about threatening his little brother. It scared Sam, frankly. Made him wonder how far he'd have to go to completely lose his brother. Wondered if he would lose himself first.

The shrill blare of Sam's ringtone cut through his train of thought, had him reaching for the phone in his pocket. He stared down at the screen, stomach tied up in knots as Ruby's name flashed in front of him. The phone blared a few more times before going to voicemail, and Sam let it.

A few seconds later, it started ringing again.

Sam shut it off, sat down on his bed, and waited for his brother.

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**The end.**

**I know this may seem a bit overdramatic in terms of how Dean reacted to what he'd done, but I feel like he'd have a really hard time leaving fellow hunters for dead no matter the situation, because it goes against everything he was taught. It wouldn't be something he'd take lightly and, as with most things Dean does or doesn't do, I'm convinced this would eat at him (even knowing that he did it for Sam). So yeah, there's my two cents. Let me know what you thought, and of course, feel free to disagree with me on this- I don't mind some honest analysis haha. Thanks so much for reading!**


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